2023 is coming to an end. Before this year 2023 ends, all of us SEOs should stop for a while and look at this year, I mean this year, 2023. This year has taught us a lot. For example, supercomputers won’t come in the form of robots, but from the door of chatbots. And it’s okay, all the best computer engineers go to Google, Facebook, Amazon. And these companies make ads, provide support, chatbots will be made by AI. By the way, even if you are not a software engineer, there is no need to feel bad. If you look at YouTube, Amazon, Apple, Google software engineers are also making videos. You can call your mom and tell her that the neighbor Sharma ji’s son with a topper, he is also making videos like you on YouTube after joining Google. He will be a little sad and finish. First day at Google, tea, samosa at Amazon office. This is my package. This is how the video is being made. Today I talk about SEO and digital marketing, whatever little knowledge I have.
According to the fun that happened in the SEO field and the SEO executives in 2023. Anyway, in this recap of 2023, we will not go according to the date, but we will see the news according to the category. So we will start with AI. And then we will see social media. Then we will see PPC. And then we will cover the big things related to SEO.
WE WILL START WITH AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)
Because this is the root of all the problems of 2023. So on the last day of November 2022, ChatGPT was launched. And on 23rd January 2023, Microsoft gave $10 billion to OpenAI. What did Microsoft do with $10 billion? We will come to that in a while. Before that, let’s see a little more. So ChatGPT came. And with this, the students got their papers solved. Badshah wrote songs. YouTubers got jobs. But SEOs left everything and started writing articles first. The article written by ChatGPT was free. SEOs had a little idea that it would be harmful. But it is free. Everyone wrote it. So much content was written by ChatGPT.
On 31st January, ChatGPT also launched its own AI content detector tool. Imagine how much SEOs must have done in 2 months. OpenAI left all the other work. They left all the investor meetings and sat down to make this detector tool first. The thing is that they themselves did not know what mess they had created. And then they shut down this tool on 20th July. OpenAI is not able to detect the content itself.
It is not able to detect the mess it is creating. Anyway, OpenAI used the hype of ChatGPT very well. They continued their development for a year. On 1st February, ChatGPT Plus was launched. Do it in $20. The whole world’s articles are in your fist. This fund came. On 23rd March, ChatGPT plugins were launched.
On 18th May, ChatGPT’s iOS app was launched. After a few days, the Android app also came. On 25th September, the image input was launched in ChatGPT. On 6th November, GPTs were launched. On 17th November, OpenAI’s board fired the CEO Sam Altman. But within 3 days, Sam Altman had to take it back. As soon as Sam came, he fired the board. When all this was happening, OpenAI’s PR team made such a rumor. That OpenAI has developed a very dangerous gauge AI system. Skynet type. With which Sam Altman wants to enter the market quickly. To earn money. And the board members were trying to save humanity. Long story short, it was a simple case of human ambition and greed. Sam Altman had the support of OpenAI’s engineers and staff. So he won. The board members forgot that if you come at the king, you best not miss.
Anyway, OpenAI opened up AI. But in 2023, there were some other players in the field of AI. The second name in this list is Microsoft. Microsoft used the investment in OpenAI. And with their Bing search engine, a feature called Bing Chat was launched. Microsoft believed that the way people are using ChatGPT in large numbers. If they add that feature to the search engine. Then people will run away. Bing Chat was launched in February 2023. But to access it, there was a waitlist. Then in May 2023, the waitlist was removed. Then in November, it was rebranded to Microsoft Copilot. A lot of good people still use Bing Chat and Copilot in their work. But Microsoft’s dream of attracting Google’s users remained a dream.
Google’s users increased in 2023. And Microsoft’s users decreased. Now speaking about Google. Google also tried to get into the field of AI Chatbot with BART. Google launched BART in February after a few days of Bing Chat. And in the whole year, Google launched a lot of updates in BART. Now BART can do math. Now it can read images. Now it can make chat emails. It can make an Excel sheet.
Google told everything from its side. But people still run away from BART. If we SEOs who keep googling all day. Even they don’t want to touch it with a 10-feet stick. Then how will normal people use it? BART gives better answers and replies than BART. Claude. Speaking about Claude. This is a chatbot. OpenAI’s ex-employees made it with the name of Anthropic AI. It is good like ChatGP. It has free and paid models. It can also serve as a free model net. You should definitely use it. There is a problem of US and UK IP. But if you sign up once, you can use it easily. Along with Indian IPs.
NOW IT’S TIME FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
In 2023, due to Elon Musk’s actions. Everyone was afraid that Twitter will shut down. To take advantage of this fear. Mark Zuckerberg’s company Facebook. Launched an app called Threads in August. Its user interface was taken from Instagram. And features were taken from Twitter. Threads has two records. Threads is not only the platform that collects the most users in the shortest time. But it has also become the platform that loses the most users in the shortest time. The faster people were making Threads accounts. The faster people were leaving their accounts. By the way, Twitter is no longer Twitter in 2023. It has become X.
Facebook has also started a paid verification badge program on Twitter in March. You can buy BlueTick. But you will have to make separate payments for both Facebook and Instagram. There is no one-on-one free offer.
In March, YouTube’s CEO Susan resigned. She was the CEO for a long time. Google has appointed Neel Mohan as YouTube’s CEO.
LET’S SEE THE WORLD OF PPC
In the world of ads, the use of both generative AI and machine learning has increased. In February, Google Ads launched a feature called Automatically Created Assets. Which can extract content from your website and make assets. It can be used in your ad campaigns. In April, Google announced the discontinuation of the first-click linear time decay and position-based attribution model. Now only the last-click and data-driven models are left.
In the beginning of this year, Google Ads teased generative AI features. In which you will get the ability to automatically generate text by using the headline, description, and other places. In fact, you will also get generative AI for images. In which you can enhance your pictures with the help of AI. You can increase it, you can uncrop it. But if there is no image, Google is also going to provide a feature to create a completely new image.
In addition to Google, Facebook also announced this type of generative AI related features in October. Google has already thought about the user safety part. And has also come up with a solution in the form of a watermark. With this, people who are not actually using images will not be able to create fake images. You can create images with the help of Google AI for ads. But it must be written in it. As we normally write in ads that it is a representative image. Similarly, there will be a watermark that will tell the user that this is an AI generated image.
SEO (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION)
But in 2023, the biggest change that has come has come in the field of SEO. And actually, if we say honestly, what has come has been brought. Remember that SEO has written a lot of content from ChatGPT. Well, guess where did all that content go? On the internet. Who will index it? Google. Why will Google do it? Anything. The content that we have copied by putting a two-line prompt on ChatGPT is not unique.
In 2023, Google has launched a total of 12 updates out of which 7 updates have come in the 4 months of August, September, October and November. 7 updates in 4 months. So in 2023, there were a total of
5 core updates,
3 review updates,
1 helpful content update and
1 link spam update.
In addition to these updates, a lot of new things happened in the SEO field. For example, in January, Apple launched Apple Business Connect for local businesses. Think of it as Apple’s GMB tool. You can give your business information in Apple Maps. Apple devices are very popular in India. People can use Apple Maps by default. So if you are using Apple Business Connect and giving your business information in Apple Maps, then your local SEO will improve. And it is an extra source of battling for you, an extra citation source.
I already write a article about SEO Checklist of 10 Points to Boost Website Ranking in 2024 Please Read for 2024 SEO roadmap.
Search Generative Experience SGE
In May, Google launched a new feature beta version called Search Generative Experience. SGE gives AI-generated answers for the query of users. Which is different from normal chatbots. Normal chatbots guess the text and give answers. Whereas SGE gives this answer based on the content of top-ranking websites. By which the answers are correct. Now the website owners believe that Google is stealing their content and giving answers to people. By which they will have a loss of revenue. And Google believes that users want to get answers in the shortest possible time, in the shortest possible clicks.
So they will have to bring this shift whether the website owners want it or not. Now this point of Google is right in its place. That there is a shift in the nature of users. There is a shift in the pattern of users. And the more popular the chatbot is, the more people will expect from Google. Directly compare. That they get information without clicking too much and without going to any web page.
But as a website owner, they also need to get compensation for their work, for their hard work. Because if the website owner does not write the content. If they do not get the benefit for it, then they will not write the content. And if they do not write the content, then where will Google bring this information and give it to the user. So there has to be some revenue sharing, some settlement which is necessary to come here. Otherwise, Google will have to be so smart. Basically, any company will have to be so smart. That they can answer the query of the users without depending on the content of the website owners.
SGE was launched in a closed beta. But slowly in the past 6 months. It has been launched in 120 countries. There are more countries than this. And in the first half of 2024, it will probably be launched worldwide normally. Because people have become habit. Apart from AI, Google has made some more milestone changes in 2023.
Apart from Google Analytics, a lot of changes have been made in Google Search Console. Google Search Console used to be a limited set feature option tool. But this is also the effect of AI. Google can now show different features on the surface. And for all of them, the performance of the website can be shown to you in the form of a report.
A lot of these changes have been either directly or indirectly due to AI. And 2024 will also not be untouched by this. Digital Marketing is very effective in itself. And SEO or PPC are all very effective channels in themselves.
